At some point this season, you can be sure the Maple Leafs will complain about the lack of quality practice time.

Heck, every team whines when the National Hockey League schedule starts to jam up and travel fatigue comes into play. But Ron Wilson could run a full fledged hockey school in the time afforded him the next three weeks.

After Tuesday’s game in Ottawa, the Leafs will be playing just four times in the next 17 days. Only two of those games can be called meaningful to 90% of the projected starting lineup and there is zero road mileage involved.

So once Wilson and his assistants get through making the final cuts — soon after Saturday’s final pre-season game at Detroit — they’ll have four days to perfect systems and work on old bugaboos such as penalty killing and the power play.

The Leafs play twice in a 72-hour span Oct. 6 and 8 against Montreal and Ottawa and then there’s a six-day siesta until the Calgary Flames come to the Air Canada Centre. Then it gets crazy with 33 games up to Christmas, with just one three-day break.

“You can never be too over-prepared to be at your best,” reasoned goaltender James Reimer, who could have used a break late last season when it was almost exclusively him between the pipes.

“Maybe (the stretch between games) is a little bit of a disadvantage. But if you’re a professional, you know how to practice and treat it as a game.

“We will be more rested than a lot of teams. Maybe that will help us get a jump earlier on and win a few games.”

As much as the Leafs are talking up Jonas Gustavsson having a better year and perhaps Ben Scrivens making the jump to back-up, much will depend on Reimer’s resiliency. Reimer brushed off his two pre-season losses before Tuesday’s game.

“I’ve felt pretty good in the net as far as moving and that’s the most important thing. You hope that you’ve done enough during the summer so that if the regular season had started this weekend or last weekend, that you would be ready. I would have been, but you have to be at your best for Oct. 6.”

Wilson recalled his days as a defenceman/forward with Toronto, when Roger Neilson was the coach and the pre-season could drag five or six weeks.

“Now it’s two weeks,” Wilson noted. “But our players are much more ready than 20 or 25 years ago.”

The Leafs put in two hours on Monday after reducing the roster to 29 players and almost an hour Tuesday before the 20 starters in the Ottawa game departed. The extra time will allow centre/winger Matthew Lombardi to make further strides in his comeback from a sever concussion and winger Mike Brown to get through a groin injury.

Recent injuries to Tim Connolly (shaken up in practice Monday) and Tyler Bozak (undisclosed) meant Nazem Kadri was centring the Phil Kessel-Joffrey Lupul combo in Connolly’s absence. Giving Kadri a spin at his old position in the middle is precisely the kind of quality time that such a long layoff provides.

“Every game, every practice, even a pre-game skate, is my chance to impress, to show I belong and to this point, I think I have,” Kadri said. “I thought this year I’d be rotated between centre and (left) wing. I didn’t know which I’d be playing permanently.”

There is buzz on special teams so far in camp, with the arrival of smooth passing defenceman John-Michael Liles to set up Dion Phaneuf’s big shot and the chance that Cody Franson might get to unload some blue-line blasts of his own. Assistants Greg Cronin and Scott Gordon have also added new wrinkles.

“It’s a bit of a fresh start for me and I’ve said all along, I’m hoping to come in as a puzzle piece,” Liles said. “Before I got here, they were headed in a great direction. I was able to see that first-hand when the Leafs came to Colorado at the end of the year when they were playing so well.

“For the most part, a lot of teams in the league change some players and you’re trying to work the new guys in. I’m trying to get familiar with our forwards and the guy I’ll be on the power play with.

“We’re heading in the right direction with the intensity in practices and trying to work a lot of things out in the last few exhibition games. You want to make sure you’re ready to go when the games count for points.”